


right there

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Exploration, Finrod is an explorer, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 23:16:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14758151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: But Balan had been reckoning without Nom’s all-absorbing curiosity, which – apparently – translated much the same here as it did anywhere else.For the thing about Nom is – well, there is no other way to say it: he is an explorer. His hands are never still for long, and his eyes rarely remain fixed to one spot.





	right there

**Author's Note:**

  * For [erlkoenig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlkoenig/gifts).



> <333

 For a man of his years and his station, Balan had known his fair share of lovers, and if pressed he would probably have claimed himself fairly knowledgeable with most of what those driven by passion or affection or loneliness or adrenaline might get up to in bed.  

 He had thought, of course. _He had thought._

 But this would be reckoning without Nom’s all-absorbing curiosity, which – apparently – translated much the same here as it did anywhere else.

 For the thing about Nom is – well, there is no other way to say it: he is an explorer. His hands are never still for long, and his eyes rarely remain fixed to one spot. And if his mouth is sometimes slower to follow – well, then. Most nights this is only because Nom is still talking, soft and low and ever curious about Balan and his life and his people and his former home, even as Nom’s gaze and fingers wander a little closer afield.

 And so it goes. No sooner does his lover tug Balan to his bed – or Balan himself roll off him, winded and spent – then Nom is propping himself up on a hand or an elbow and running calloused harpist’s fingers across Balan’s body as if he might map out its territories. No matter that, as far as Balan can tell, a man of his people is of approximately the same shape as a man of Nom’s. Still Nom will trace the shape of Balan’s face, the span of his ribs, the jut of a hipbone, with wonder and awe and delight.

 Balan had tried to ask about it, once and only once. “Do I show my age so easily that you can read all my years upon my body?”

 All right, looking back, perhaps that hadn’t been quite the best way he could have put it, knowing Nom’s fears for him. And indeed, Nom had quite visibly wilted.

 “No! No, no, no! Oh, my poor Bëor – is that what this means, among your folk? Powers, I am a fool for not thinking to ask. I am so sorry!”

 And for all Balan’s explanations that the question had been in jest – _he simply didn’t understand what Nom found worthy of continued attention in Balan’s body once he’d been satisfied, that was all! Nom had gasped in indignation_ – his lover had pulled away a little, truly concerned he had done Balan some dishonor with his soft touches. It had taken some nights, and some touches of Balan’s own, to prove to him otherwise, but when he did –

 Oh, when he did! Balan had never known he could tear up from the relief of feeling Nom’s fingers slide tentatively up his arm once more.

 “No, all is well,” he had told Nom hurriedly, before the other might take this wrong too. “It is just a relief that I had not chased you from me for good with my bumbling attempts at humor.”

 Nom had snorted. “ _You_? Bumbling? My darling Man, let me tell you a thing or two about bumbling!” And what had followed had been hours of cutting insights upon more family members and politicians and former lovers than Balan had been able to follow, but what he _had_ been able to take away from Nom’s rambling was this: Nom touched because he found joy in the play, and, apparently, in Balan.  For the exploration was back, and Nom’s fingers had danced and dipped and tangled upon his body again as freely as they had before. And this to Balan had seemed worth any number of lectures upon folk he had never met, and so he simply smiled up at Nom as his lover went on.  

 Tonight, though. Tonight, Nom is skirting dangerously close to uncovering a secret that Balan has somehow managed to keep hidden from his elven lover this long.

 Oh, Balan knows that it had been bound to happen sometime, but ai, Nom will be inexorable once he does manage to unearth it.

 For if he so happens to press just behind Balan’s knees – oh gods all gods, that right there, _he is so so close_ – then Nom will discover the perilous sensitivity of that particular bit of skin.

 In a word, Nom will learn that Balan is ticklish.

 Tremors are already running up both Balan’s thighs in anticipation of the impending touch.

 And he must make some noise too, for Nom immediately stops the night’s musings – something about a cousin who had also founded a hidden kingdom somewhere, as far as Nom knew – and looks back up at him anxiously.

 “Bëor? Are you all right?”

 “No, don’t worry, I’m” – _about a heartbeat away from accidentally kicking you off the bed_ – “fine.”

 “Mmmmmmm, if you say so,” Nom says, a little worriedly all the same – a statement that he then punctuates with a light brush of his fingertips up the skin at the back of Balan’s left knee.

 Balan’s entire leg kicks out as if struck by lightning.

 At the movement Nom snatches his hand away in shock, staring and staring as Balan trembles and fights to lower his shaking leg back into some approximation of its original place.

 “Bëor?” he asks slowly, his eyes never leaving Balan’s leg. “My love, what was _that_?”   

 “That –“ Balan can already feel the laughter looming, unstoppable and sweet as a summer storm. He wonders, for a heartbeat, how new this quirk of Men will really be to Nom, and how much his already exploratory lover really needs to know about such a terrible, terrible weakness, but –

 No. No, if knowing about it will bring Nom interest or fulfillment – or even, does Balan dare to presume this, _joy_ – then Nom deserves to know.

 They have come through enough.

 “Did I – hurt you?” Nom frets, but Balan cuts him off.

 “You didn’t – you really, really didn’t. Sometimes a touch will set off that reaction.” How can he possibly explain being ticklish to someone who doesn’t seem to have ever experienced anything like it? “The feeling is just – odd.”

 “Odd?” Nom is already sizing up his knee again, a gleam growing in his eyes. “In a bad way, or just – oh Bëor, I have never seen anything like it! How did you know that would happen? Is there any way I can persuade you to let me try it again? I want to observe, now that I know I’m watching for an unconscious reaction of some sort, please can I-“

 The laughter that has been welling in Balan’s chest finally breaks free, prompted as much by Nom’s growing delight as it is by his actual touch: Balan is rolled to his side facing Nom with the force of it. And Nom himself watches all this with an indulgent but growing smile upon his face, as if awaiting the explanation of a particularly Mannish joke, and this only drives Balan to laugh a little harder.

 “What is it?” Nom asks softly.

 “Just a bit-“ – Balan has to fight to catch his breath. “Ticklish. And you wanting to study it. . .”

 Nom, of course, seizes upon the new word. “Ticklish?”

 Anything in Balan’s language is always already rendered new and wondrous by Nom’s elven tongue, but for some reason this particular word falls from his lips as an especial delight to Balan’s ears. “Oooh, this is a new one! By the ending – an adjective? Adverb? Either way, a description of some sort – was it for the movement or the sensation? Or no, a degree of relation for how good something felt? Was it-“

 The only possible response to such a very Nom-ish reaction, all curiosity and delight and wonder, is for Balan to sit up and kiss him. And so he does.

 When he draws back, Nom is already beaming. “Is that ticklish too?”

 Balan can’t quite restrain the snort. “No. And I know I’m going to regret showing you this, but come here? Give me your hand? There. _There_.”

 And it isn’t long before he’s laughing again as Nom’s feather-light touch skates up the sensitive skin, and Nom, ever the explorer, begins to try different speeds and pressures and movements of fingers.

But better even than that is the way that Nom watches him as if _Balan_ is the wonder here, when in reality Balan knows that the wonder is _Nom_.


End file.
